Wednesday, November 20, 2013

POLL 3: BEBO VS ASH VS SRK VS SALMAN VS SHAHID VS …

Kareena Kapoor with co-star Imran Khan in Gori Tere Pyaar Mein: you voted for her fans as being the most active on Internet

Dear Readers,

If I don’t post this blog right away,
I’m afraid@Kareena_No1 on Twitter will have me hung, drawn and
quartered. My apologies. I’ve been busy, so I’m just sitting
down to discuss this poll question I had asked you earlier this month:

WHICH BOLLYWOOD STAR HAS THE MOST ACTIVE FANS ON THE NET?

Here’s how you voted:

34% of you believe Kareena Kapoor Khan has the most active
fans on the Internet.

25% believe it’s Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.

15% picked Shahid Kapoor fans.

7% of you voted for Rani Mukerji’s fans.

4% each believe that Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone’s fans are most active on the Net.

If you were to go by the raging battles
on the social media, it would seem that Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan are the
Bollywood stars who have the most active fans on the Internet. Yet, it’s
Amitabh Bachchan who has the largest and/or fastest-growing number
of followers on most platforms (7.2 million followers on Twitter, 6.9
million likes on FB as I write this post) – and if you follow such things
closely you will see his fans too are quick to zero in on anyone seeming
remotely critical of him.

From personal experience I can tell you
that the most overwhelmingly positive response I’ve ever got to a query on
Twitter has been from Rani Mukerji fans. When I was hosting an interview show
for Headlines Today till three years back, I used to have a Twitter section in
which I’d ask my guest questions sent to me by people following me on Twitter.
No stars’ fans have ever flooded me with as many questions and messages as Rani’s
fans would when I’d alert them about an interview. They sent me so many tweets
for one particular show, that when I printed them out it came to 35 pages! This
was about 5 years back, Rani was already floundering in the industry at the
time and it was clear that her decision to stick primarily to Yashraj Films’
projects combined with the industry’s tendency to tire easily of heroines had
damaged her career, possibly irreparably. From her fans’ messages though, it
was evident that there was a hunger among them to see her in more films and in
substantial roles. The experience of that interview with Rani set my mind
ticking so I checked the Twitter account of her contemporary Preity Zinta whose
acting career was clearly pretty much over by then. The numbers were startling:
she has 2.6 million followers as of now with not a single film in hand and none
in sight, and even today they remain a very active community. Again, from the
messages being sent to her, it was clear that there was a hardcore fan
following yearning to see her in more films and solid roles.

On a not-so-positive note, when I first
joined Twitter, I found the fans who tried to intimidate me the most were Salman
Khan fans – back then they’d pick on every single tweet I posted on Bollywood
heroes and allege an anti-Salman bias for the most laughable reasons, I assume
to put me on the defensive. Was I doing something wrong, I wondered? This is
obviously exactly the question they wanted me to ask myself. I was reviewing
films for Headlines Today at the time and for weeks before a Salman film’s
release, they’d start sending tweets of this sort: We know you media are all
pro-SRK and anti-Salman so it goes without saying you will give Bhai’s film a
bad review. After a while I began to realise that this was a psychological game
to influence critics who might consequently, at a sub-conscious level, hesitate
to give a negative review even if they were genuinely unfavourably inclined
towards a particular Salman film. Was I being singled out for such attention?
Was I flattering myself that people thought I mattered enough to be targeted
with such mind games? Fearing that my ego was getting the better of me, I
visited the Twitter accounts of critics from rival channels and newspapers and
found that they were all being similarly targeted, some mildly as I was, and
some rather viciously.

Then when Guzaarish was released and I happened to tweet my thoughts about
the film I had my most unpleasant experience ever on Twitter. Fans of Aishwarya
Rai Bachchan and Hrithik Roshan bombarded me with tweets threatening all forms
of violence including rape and murder on me and my family, while directing the
most vile abuse at me, my family and my organisation. I immediately visited the
Twitter accounts of critics from two rival channels and whaddyaknow: the very
Twitter handles that were attacking me that day were writing to both of them
with the exact same threats and abuse. That’s when I devised my personal social
media policy (for want of a better word) that I intend to practice for all time
to come: NEVER REPLY TO ABUSE AND THREATS. It helped. In time I found that abusers
melted away. I’d like to assume with Gandhian conviction that this happened
because there is limited satisfaction to be derived from cursing and
threatening a person who refuses to respond. Now I find the people on my
followers list are primarily interesting film buffs with whom one can engage in
a sensible conversation; the insecure, verbally violent sort rarely bother me
now.

Question is: from personal experience,
do I conclude that the Bollywood stars with the most active fans on the
Internet are Salman, Rani, Aishwarya and Hrithik? Not necessarily. First, I
believe it is unfair to gauge the fan activity of male and female stars with
the same barometer. It is an achievement for the female stars and a measure of
their extreme charisma (which the industry does not fully tap) that they have such
massive fan followings considering that they almost never get the kind of
larger-than-life roles that the men get. Second, the heavy activity among female
stars’ fans shows a keenness to see them in the sort of projects that made them
stars in the first place. Goes without saying, there are not enough such
projects going around. After a while, the enthusiasm of the fan followings is
bound to dwindle. Third, a star may have active fans on the Net even without
being personally present on any web platform. Aishwarya, Kareena, Katrina, Rani
and Ranbir are proof of that. Fourth, numbers don’t necessarily indicate
activity, which is why when I uploaded this poll, I urged readers to read the
question carefully. To my mind – and this is purely from observation – though
Bachchan fans are extremely active on the Net, fans of SRK and Salman are even
more so, possibly because Bachchan’s numerous projects are still the sort that
one would see in a star’s second innings whereas SRK and Salman are right now at
their peak. What about fans of the third Khan? Well, though Aamir is a massive
star, he himself is relatively indifferent to the Net therefore the other two end
up scoring over him in this respect. On the other hand, because of the kind of
projects SRK and Salman choose, the kind of fan Shah Rukh attracts is more
likely to be already active on the Net and able to articulate their views in
comparison with the average Salman fan (not all, but most, please note). My guesstimate
– which, incidentally, mirrors the analysis of the film industry too – is that
Shah Rukh and Aamir fans have similar profiles while Salman and Akshay fans
have similar profiles in terms of education, background and so on.

9 comments:

Annaaaaaaaaaaaaa... whatta sweet word for us as a ranians.. and i will never forget that time! nahin bholunga main!! one of my sweet crazy moment ever as a ranian :) Thanks for giving us that change to keep in touch with hamara pyaari rani. hehheehee.. Miss to see u interview her again... :(

What a comment by you madam Anna-" Shah Rukh and Aamir fans have similar profiles while Salman and Akshay fans have similar profiles in terms of education, background and so on. " Do you mean to say Salman & Akshay fans are not educated & do not have a good background.

I think stereotyping Salman and akshay fans as same , or rather uneducated , is what where most unaware people go wrong. I will tell you facts , salman has double fan following than shahrukh(considering facebook).So, whether its educated or uneducated both types of fans , salman has larger chunk.

Now , definitely the people who reply to reviews and all are either uneducated or educated fools.Who has so much time to reply to such foolish things...

I am replying just to say that the notion that salman and akshay have uneducated fans is totally absurd. It is just that they have more fan following in such people than what other actors have.

As far as SRK and AAMIR thing is considered , no intelligent FOLKS like srk, and people only appreciate aamir's acting and his movies.But, they dont appreciate aamir as a person.

What you see on twitter is result of the fact that shahrukh and aamir have quite less popularity amongst masses(what u call them) ,So most of their fans are educated (NRI's)and salman has popularity everywhere.

The biggest fact ,80% of fans don't care about and don't comment on reviews and newspaper articles.

Bachchan has many more followers on Twitter than Shah Rukh and Salman despite having joined after both. On Facebook, though Salman's likes skyrocketed as soon as he joined, please look at how rapidly Bachchan's numbers are growing now in comparison with Salman and Shah Rukh's. When you wrote this note to me on November 21, you say AB had 6.9 million likes on FB, SRK had 5.3 million and Salman had 11 million. Today, just nine days later as I write this note to you, those numbers are: AB - 7.2 million, SRK - 5.4 million, Salman - 11 million. In addition, Bachchan is on other platforms on which neither of these stars has a presence. I stand by my analysis and my facts.

About Me

Anna MM Vetticad is an award-winning journalist, journalism teacher and author of the critically acclaimed bestseller The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic, an overview of the Hindi film industry presented through an account of a year in which she watched every single Bollywood film released in India’s National Capital Region. A journalist since 1994, she has worked with India Today, The Indian Express and Headlines Today. At HT she hosted her own interview show Star Trek which drew all India’s eminent entertainment personalities. While Anna has spent most of her career as a behind-the-scenes editorial person, she has also reported on most major Indian entertainment and lifestyle events and several international ones including Cannes and the Oscars, in addition to being the film critic for Headlines Today. She is currently reporting and writing for multiple publications on cinema and social issues with a focus on gender concerns. The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic is available on amazon.com, ebay.in, flipkart.com, ombooksinternational.com, ombooks.com, infibeam.com, homeshop18.com and dialabook.in among other websites, and in stores across India. Twitter: @annavetticad